Personal, social, health and economic (PSHE) education is the school curriculum subject in England dedicated to supporting children’s safety, health, wellbeing and preparation for life and work. When timetabled and taught effectively, it can play a key role in improving young people’s preparedness for life beyond school, including for higher education and the graduate labour market. For instance, PSHE education can provide a safe and dedicated space for young people to learn about sex and relationships, budgeting and time management, among other things that most students will need to navigate more independently – and sometimes for the first time – during higher education.
As the official subject association for PSHE education, and a charity and membership body supporting over 50,000 teachers and schools nationally with resources, training and guidance, the PSHE Association was especially interested in the Higher Education Policy Institute’s (HEPI) recent report, One Step Beyond, which investigated how well the curriculum as a whole prepares young people for life beyond school.
The report, which is based on an analysis of data from a survey of 1,105 undergraduates in England, found that over half of participants wanted to have received more education on personal finances and budgeting (59%) and to have had more opportunities to learn ‘life skills’ (51%) prior to entering higher education. A large minority also wanted to have received more careers education (44%), a topic that PSHE education covers and which, when delivered well, can make a positive difference to young people’s confidence, sense of direction and career trajectories.
Importantly, the report also found that over half (58%) of participants wanted PSHE education to be compulsory until 18. At present, while relationships, sex and health education (RSHE) is compulsory for 16- to 18-year-olds in schools with sixth forms – and our own PSHE education planning guidance runs up to post-16 / key stage 5 – this requirement is not applicable to other settings, including sixth form and further education colleges. Furthermore, existing PSHE education content on economic wellbeing, personal financial education and careers education is optional in all but independent schools. As there is evidence to suggest that these are topics that young people from more affluent backgrounds are more likely to be taught about and discuss with their parents, all of PSHE education, including economic wellbeing, personal finance and careers education, has the potential to contribute towards narrowing social inequalities. And this is what we argue strongly for in our response to the Curriculum and Assessment Review, alongside strengthening the expectation that all young people should benefit from PSHE education up to the age of 18.
The good news is that since statutory RSHE requirements were introduced in 2020, these appear to have made a positive impact. And the findings from the One Step Beyond report support this idea, with half of the participants reporting feeling well prepared for sex and relationships in higher education in 2024 (47%) – almost double the percentage that reported feeling this way three years earlier (27%).
Another aspect of life which PSHE education can help young people to navigate during school, college and higher education is mental health. The One Step Beyond report found that most participants believed that their schools or colleges had done a ‘good’ or ‘excellent’ job of preparing them to plan and manage their workloads (61%); take care of their mental health and wellbeing (56%); and use healthy coping strategies (55%). However, a substantial minority of participants did not feel this way, suggesting that there is room to improve the quality of education that students receive on these topics – and PSHE education can play a crucial role in making this happen.
PSHE education provides opportunities for young people to learn about mental health and develop skills that can support them in taking care of it. For example, through PSHE education, young people can be taught about how to prevent and manage stress, which can aggravate or contribute towards the development of mental health difficulties. This is achieved in a variety of ways. For instance, by providing opportunities for young people to be taught about how to problem solve, develop greater emotional awareness, use healthy coping strategies, maintain good sleep routines and recognise when and how to access support for themselves or others.
After leaving school, such teaching could help young people to navigate further and higher education, which both demand greater independence and present unique opportunities and challenges. Illustrating this, when 136 A-level students were asked to describe their experience of sixth form using three words or phrases, the majority (79%) used at least one term to describe it as challenging and almost half (43%) described it as intense, stressful or overwhelming. Furthermore, across several interview studies, students have consistently described studying A-levels as a ‘massive step up’, a ‘jump’ and ‘a completely different ballgame’, which demands far more self-directed learning and can be an emotionally turbulent experience. It has also been found that experiencing education-related problems is among the main reasons why 16- to 18-year-olds contact Childline. So, PSHE education during school and post-16 education has the potential to support young people and contribute to improving higher education students’ mental health by equipping them with knowledge, understanding and skills that can help them to navigate this stage of education prior to entering it.
To conclude, high-quality PSHE education has the potential to improve young people’s preparedness for many aspects of higher education – social, academic and economic – as well as for life beyond its walls. And it is for this reason that the PSHE Association has argued in response to the Curriculum Review and Assessment Group consultation that personal finance education and careers education should be placed on the same statutory footing as RSHE and for PSHE education, comprising all these elements, to be scheduled as a school curriculum subject in all schools, with at least one timetabled lesson per week.
Findings from the One Step Beyond report indicate that PSHE education has had a positive impact on preparing young people for life beyond school, but that there is significant potential and need to build on improvements since elements of RSHE became statutory. This includes more emphasis on economic wellbeing, careers and mental health, as well as a guarantee that young people in all post-16 education settings can benefit from PSHE education until the age of 18 – not just those in specific settings.
Since the beginning of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Ukrainians have fled in mass numbers to seek refuge. Among this group, many (prospective) students and academics had to leave Ukraine to seek safety and new opportunities within the higher education sector elsewhere.
We conducted research to create an oral history archive of the experiences of Ukrainian refugees in the English higher education sector. We interviewed 11 Ukrainian refugees ranging from prospective students to qualified academics, to explore their ability to navigate the sector. We found that despite some support measures available, Ukrainian refugees face numerous challenges when trying to access and participate in higher education in England, whether they are students or academics.
Even with special support measures in place, the process is far from straightforward. These refugees often have to be incredibly resourceful, using all available connections and resources, even those outside the higher education sector, to overcome the barriers they face. This journey to become part of the higher education community is not just about finding opportunities but also about actively creating them, demonstrating their resilience and determination.
A place of opportunity
Ukrainian students and academics reported that the UK broadly, as well as specifically higher education institutions in England, created opportunities for them to adapt and succeed in their new host community. Institutions individually or in partnership with organisations such as the Council of At-risk Academics (CARA) provided sanctuary scholarships, financial support, free language classes, and safe spaces for Ukrainians to connect within their institutions.
Ukrainian students and academics as well as those who have been aspiring to become students or academics in England also expressed their gratitude towards the Homes for Ukraine scheme provided by the UK government, as their hosts’ support alleviated pressures that typically burden refugees when entering new countries and the HE sector.
Here is an example of a positive influence of hosts on the adaptation to life in England by one Ukrainian academic:
Thank God, there was a family who was ready to host us… We are very happy about this, because I think this is a lifelong acquaintance. The key one, the one that turned our lives around. I came with my children, and my children are almost adults. We settled in very well, they provided us with full support in absolutely everything, such as accommodation and children’s education.
Persistent challenges and pursuing agency
Despite the support measures, our interviewees explained that they have faced many persistent challenges that restricted their ability to navigate the English HE sector. Language barriers still existed within HEIs and the high cost of living in England created financial pressures and increased difficulty to find employment and accommodation. Another key obstacle that impacted Ukrainian prospective students and academics’ experiences was the non-recognition of previous qualifications that were attained in Ukraine.
One of our interviewees summarised their current situation:
My career in Ukraine seems to have reached almost the highest level. I mean, if you look at the scientific field, it is a doctor, a professor. Whereas in England, it has dropped to a lower level, and now I need to build it back up to a higher one.
Both Ukrainian students and academics, and those aspiring to become students or academics in England, have been experiencing challenges that the British government and English institutions struggled to rectify. However, we found they were able to discover avenues independently or collectively as Ukrainians to create their own opportunities. By using technology to communicate and discover information, attending extra classes to improve their skillsets, finding appropriate independent agencies that help Ukrainian students enrol to English universities, and creating their own communities within England has provided them with the agency to reach their goals.
One participant highlighted the importance of have access to a Ukrainian community in England:
…when all Ukrainians know that, for example, on Saturdays they gather in such a church, and on Thursdays they gather for language courses there. And that is it, it is necessary to give advertisements and announcements through these chats, through some pages on Facebook.
How HE can help
These findings are crucial for guiding policymaking at both national and institutional levels in England and beyond. They highlight the effectiveness of current support measures for refugees, including those from Ukraine who have gone to great lengths to generate and apply their resourcefulness in navigating the challenges of integrating into a host community and HE sector.
While Ukrainian refugees face general challenges such as language barriers, high living costs, and issues in finding suitable or any employment and accommodation, there are also specific challenges related to the HE environment which require interventions: recognition of prior qualifications, enhanced English language support, financial assistance, building social networks, utilising technology.
All HE stakeholders, from the government to the employees at higher education institutions, play a crucial role in supporting Ukrainian refugees. Thus, by implementing the following recommendations, they can help refugees find and exercise their agency and succeed in the HE environment:
Develop clear policies for qualification recognition by working with credential evaluation services to streamline the recognition process for Ukrainian qualifications
Expand English language support programs by offering more intensive and specialised language courses tailored to the needs of Ukrainian refugees
Explore ways for increasing financial support by provide additional scholarships, grants, and affordable housing options to reduce financial pressures
Foster community building by create initiatives that encourage social integration and peer support amongst Ukrainian refugees
Leverage technology by using digital platforms to disseminate information, offer virtual support, and connect refugees with resources and mentors
Protesters in Cambridge urged Harvard to resist Trump’s demands at a Saturday rally.
Erin Clark/The Boston Globe/Getty Images
Harvard University is pushing back on demands from the Trump administration calling for a long list of institutional reforms in response to alleged antisemitism and civil rights violations on campus.
Nearly $9 billion in federal contracts and grants hang in the balance at the institution amid a review the administration announced last month, alleging the university has mishandled instances of antisemitic harassment on campus.
President Alan Garber said Monday that the institution will not accept the administration’s agreement, writing that Harvard “will not surrender its independence or relinquish its constitutional rights.”
Hours later, the Joint Task Force to Combat Anti-Semitism announced a freeze on $2.2 billion in multiyear grant funding for the institution and $60 million in multiyear contracts.
The Trump administration presented Harvard with at least two demand letters, the first on April 3 and another on Friday. The letters call for changes to governance, hiring and admissions, a ban on masks, and more, including greater scrutiny of international applicants to exclude “students supportive of terrorism or anti-Semitism,” according to one letter.
“Harvard has in recent years failed to live up to both the intellectual and civil rights conditions that justify federal investment. But we appreciate your expression of commitment to repairing those failures and welcome your collaboration in restoring the University to its promise,” top officials at the General Services Administration, U.S. Department of Education and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services wrote in Friday’s letter to Harvard leadership.
Friday’s letter also called for a mask ban; a shutdown of all diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives; and the reformation of multiple programs “with egregious records of antisemitism or other bias.” Targets include Harvard’s Divinity School, Graduate School of Education, School of Public Health, Medical School, Center for Middle Eastern Studies, the Harvard Law School International Human Rights Clinic and several others.
The administration also called for the university to “commission an external party, which shall satisfy the federal government as to its competence and good faith, to audit those programs and departments that most fuel antisemitic harassment or reflect ideological capture.”
In a public letter to the Harvard community, Garber rejected the sweeping demands.
“Late Friday night, the administration issued an updated and expanded list of demands, warning that Harvard must comply if we intend to ‘maintain [our] financial relationship with the federal government.’ It makes clear that the intention is not to work with us to address antisemitism in a cooperative and constructive manner,” Garber wrote. “Although some of the demands outlined by the government are aimed at combating antisemitism, the majority represent direct governmental regulation of the ‘intellectual conditions’ at Harvard.”
Garber’s letter rejecting Trump’s demands also included a link to the legal response sent to the federal government, which noted changes to campus policies and “new accountability procedures” introduced at the university over the course of the last 15 months.
“It is unfortunate, then, that your letter disregards Harvard’s efforts and instead presents demands that, in contravention of the First Amendment, invade university freedoms long recognized by the Supreme Court,” lawyers representing the university wrote in response.
In addition to freezing more than $2 billion in federal funding, the joint task force responded to the institution’s rejection, saying, “Harvard’s statement today reinforces the troubling entitlement mindset that is endemic in our nation’s most prestigious universities and colleges—that federal investment does not come with the responsibility to uphold civil rights laws.”
Dozens of colleges across the nation—including others in the Ivy League—are also facing investigations into alleged antisemitism and other issues, including race-based programs or scholarships and the participation of transgender athletes in intercollegiate athletics.
Harvard’s rebuttal to the federal government comes as the university plans to issue $750 million in bonds, which a spokesperson told Inside Higher Ed was “part of ongoing contingency planning for a range of financial circumstances.” Princeton is also issuing $320 million in bonds this spring.
Harvard faculty have also taken legal action against the Trump administration.
The Harvard chapter of the American Association of University Professors filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration on Friday alleging that the review of Harvard’s funds was an illegal exploitation of the Civil Rights Act and an effort to impose political views upon the institution.
The lawsuit alleged that the Trump administration’s “unlawful actions have already caused severe and irreparable harm by halting academic research and inquiry at Harvard, including in areas that have no relation whatsoever to charges of antisemitism or other civil rights violations.”
Harvard’s AAUP chapter also signed a lawsuit last month with other faculty groups pushing back on the Trump administration’s efforts to arrest and deport pro-Palestinian student activists.
Higher Education Inquirer readers are encouraged to participate in Day of Action for Higher Education on Thursday, April 17. For more information, visit the Day of Action page at the the Coalition for Action in Higher Education website. The website also includes resources. The coalition includes the Debt Collective, AAUP, and Higher Education Labor United.
To gain a historical perspective of what is happening today on US campuses, it’s essential to have a knowledge of what has happened before. The uncensored history of US higher education is poorly understood even on US campuses. Thankfully, some of it has been documented and it’s even available online. A case in point is Bettina Apthekar’s Higher Education and Student Rebellion in the United States, 1960-1969–A Bibliography. This document is a treasure trove of information from the period of civil disobedience that saw some successes, successes that helped expand democracy in higher education and in society. Something we are struggling for again. If you know of other historical documents that are available online, please inform us. We’ll also add it to our list of resources.
As Subini Annamma and David Stovall write in their February piece, “Standing Up to the New Segregationists,” “When universities stay silent or indicate their willingness to comply with executive orders that seek to dehumanize anyone who is not white, male and cisgender, they are sending a message.”
We would argue that all of us in the system of higher education, on individual and collective levels, are sending messages with our action or nonaction at this moment. The past few months have been a period of chaos marked by rapid-fire executive orders, threats to college and university funding, and presidential edicts that undermine higher education’s fundamental values. The whiplash of ongoing executive actions and their judicial reversals is overwhelming, and the ground keeps shaking under our feet.
Consistent with a traumatic experience (when events occur faster than our ability to cope), some of us may be experiencing a kind of trauma response, an instinctive response to a perceived threat. Most of us have heard about fight-or-flight modes, but it seems to be fawn and freeze responses that are playing out at many institutions across the country. The fawning response in higher education manifested in the form of anticipatory compliance in the face of threats to colleges’ federal funding. Diversity, equity and inclusion offices were jettisoned within a blink of an eye.
We also are seeing some of our colleagues struggling with the task of revising position descriptions and scrubbing institutional websites, all while trying to support their colleagues who are most at risk. And there are many of us who don’t know what to do; feeling unsettled and fearful, we are just trying to make it through each day.
Despite what is happening around us, we have to continue to attend to our work—to do all of the things that keep the institution running, to be in relationship with our colleagues and to be in classroom spaces with our students. We may be asking ourselves how we can show up in a meaningful way when our world is on fire, or how we can move forward when we feel so powerless.
But if we do nothing, what does that say about our commitment to the essential promises of education—to the free exchange of ideas and academic freedom, to a belief in science and innovation, and, most especially, to our commitment to access, diversity and equity, which we know enhances the learning experience for everyone? Are these not the things that drew us to education in the first place?
This moment is calling us back to our essential purposes—the deep relationships with students, the excitement of new ideas bubbling up and the sense of freedom that comes from the creation of knowledge in the context of community. It is time for us to get to work, to reclaim our spaces, to take a stand. We cannot wait for someone else to save us: We must save ourselves. And we do so through deep relationships within the context of community. As we have learned from bell hooks, Audre Lorde, Paulo Freire and Kimberlé Crenshaw, relationships will be our resistance.
Relationships are not just the touchy-feely outcome of safe learning spaces: They are the foundation. And what better action can we take to protect ourselves and our communities from harm than by strengthening our foundation for this moment and what lies ahead? Fortunately for us all, whether you are an educator or institutional leader who has always prioritized relationships or one who is looking to strengthen your community as the ground beneath higher education rumbles and shakes, relatively small efforts (which is perhaps all we can muster) can reap far-reaching benefits.
There are a myriad of brilliant ways to foster belonging, structure brave dialogue spaces and listen deeply to others, indeed, many more than we could possibly incorporate here. What we offer are some practical ways to grow and maintain an ethic of care and relational accountability. We hope this inspires simple ways for you to gather with others or maybe gives you permission to explore your own ideas for slowing down to the speed of relationship-building. What we share here are not new ideas, but they may have been forgotten.
The offerings below span many cultures and have been practiced in one form or another by communities over time in response to oppressive regimes across the globe. We just have to recall the wisdom of our ancestors and employ some of their communal resistance strategies. They made sense of the world, grieved, resisted and found joy. So, too, must we.
Notice and Name It
“I believe we have a responsibility to create ways of understanding political and historical realities that will create possibilities for change. I think that this is our role, to develop ways of working through which, little by little, the oppressed can unveil their reality.” —Paulo Freire
We can’t pretend that what is happening in the world doesn’t impact us, our students or their learning. Perceived and real threats of harm impede learning and development. In noticing and naming what is happening, we give ourselves and our students a means of coming to terms with it. When we name the fears and acknowledge uncertainty, we release a bit of the tension and welcome participants in all their experiences. This could involve a facilitator-led nod to the political climate, musings from the group of what they are holding in their minds, a meditative moment or a two-minute journaling activity in which students reflect on what they need to let go of in order to be present for the work ahead in class. These techniques can be just as helpful in meetings and other convenings of staff and faculty.
In location-diverse, online environments, where you can expect a wide range of pressing matters, feel free to use or adapt this Acknowledgment Statement developed by emareena danielles and Deborah Kronenberg for a PODlive series on facilitation.
Play: A Shortcut to Joy and Laughter
Play and laughter are part of our ancestral languages, of our somatic ways of being. They exist across every culture to fuel us, nourish us and allow us to be more fully human. When was the last time you used your body or voice or language in a new way? How can you make space for a moment of play at the start of any group work or class, faculty development workshop, or community meeting? As easy as making a sound and movement, drawing with your nondominant hand, appropriating a childhood game toward a collective goal, or engaging in gibberish conversations, the small, silly risk will lead to a room (virtual or otherwise) of laughter.
The collective release of emotion through play creates a community poised to dig into the work with joy and openness and gives us a reference point of when we took a risk, went with the flow and practiced resilience. For a great resource, Moving Beyond Icebreakers by Stanley Pollack with Mary Fusoni not only has a plethora of games to try but teaches facilitators how to use the games as metaphors for the work ahead. You may also want to check out Professors at Play for a more in-depth discourse.
Tell Stories
“We tell stories because we are human. But we are also made more human because we tell stories. When we do this, we tap into an ancient power that makes us, and the world, more of who we are: a single race looking for reasons, searching for purpose, seeking to find ourselves.” —Amanda Gorman
Storytelling is a tradition that transcends cultures and communities and helps us make meaning of experiences. Nothing creates a connection between two people quite like sharing real stories from their own experiences and making meaning of the ideas together. A brief pair storytelling activity or a full Story Circle process holistically engages us all, pulling more of ourselves into the room. Stories activate our deep listening capacity, build authentic connections and remind us of why we are here in this moment, doing this work.
Gather Together
“I have seen, over and over, the connection between tuning into what brings aliveness into our systems and being able to access personal, relational and communal power.” —adrienne maree brown, Pleasure Activism
When we are exhausted and overwhelmed, it is easy to isolate. But as the news headlines continue to keep us in a state of constant upset and tension, we can choose to pull away from our individual screens as a means of resistance, as a conscious choice to be our full selves and band together with others. Whether through synchronized movie nights, local stitching circles or open mikes, coming together builds our relationships and positively impacts our communities’ efficacy. At College Unbound, students, faculty and staff kick off our in-person classes by breaking bread together to settle into our beautiful community before the academics begin. Gather however and whenever you can and know you are generating power by doing so.
Self-Care
As facilitators of relationships, of learning, of change-makers, we also have to care for ourselves. Here, we are not talking about indulging oneself with the luxury of a spa day. We are talking about the radical practice of taking care, slowing down and saying no to productivity as an indicator of self-worth. We can also care for ourselves through connection with peers both within and outside the field of education. We can prioritize our own joy, however that comes, and know that our rest is resistance, too (check out Tricia Hersey’s work).
Resistance is needed now and mercifully comes in many forms. It might show up in marches and protests, but it can also be found in discovering what is within our locus of control and reclaiming our own agency. Our facilitation of spaces that build a sense of agency for students, staff and ourselves in solidarity can grow power.
The antidote to oppression can be found in these glimpses of liberation, in spaces where we are unafraid and can imagine a more just world. In this context, we also build up our reserves for the journey toward the future we seek to manifest.
If we can take a moment away from the chatter and from the bombardment of headlines meant to cause chaos, we can tap into our collective histories and remember: We know how to do this. Let’s recognize all the work we are already doing, the embedded relationship-building that has sustained us until now. And let’s continue to do the work that brought us to these educational spaces. The relational work we foster is the bedrock for the world we need to create together.
Sylvia C. Spears is serving as provost and Distinguished Professor of Education, Equity and Social Justice at College Unbound, a small, private degree-completion college focused on adult learners.
Deborah Kronenberg is an educator, consultant and public speaker who approaches communities of learning with creative, interdisciplinary, relationship-centric leadership in faculty and administrative roles in the greater Boston area.
The Trump administration’s directives on diversity, equity and inclusion have wreaked havoc across the higher education landscape. Confusion persists about whether all DEI activities are forbidden or just ones that are officially illegal. To top it off, there’s much bewilderment about what exactly constitutes an “illegal DEI” activity.
The ambiguity is a feature, not a bug. When people are confused about what’s legal or not, they’ll overcorrect out of fear. As a result, we see colleges and universities scrubbing DEI websites and cutting diversity-related programming. The outcome? A hasty, often over-the-top retreat from efforts that serve students and faculty alike.
Critically, some of the programs deemed illegal by the Trump administration have not been ruled unlawful in the courts, such as scholarships and prizes that consider race or ethnicity in the selection process. The more accurate term to describe them is “vulnerable” rather than “illegal.” In Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, the Supreme Court specifically struck down a form of race-conscious admissions. While a court technically could apply SFFA in the future to render consideration of race in scholarships and recruitment efforts illegal, that day has yet to come, despite the current administration’s faulty interpretation of the ruling.
Even Ed Blum, who organized the SFFA lawsuits, acknowledges this distinction, as reported in Inside Higher Ed: “Blum doesn’t actually believe the [SFFA] decision itself extends to those programs [e.g., race-conscious scholarships, internships or pre-college programs]. He does think they’re illegal—there just hasn’t been a successful case challenging them yet.”
“I haven’t really made myself clear on this, which is my fault,” Blum told Inside Higher Ed in February, “but the SFFA opinion didn’t change the law for those policies.”
So what does that mean for colleges and universities? The fuzziness over the legality of traditional race-conscious scholarships and recruitment programs will remain until the question is decided by the courts. While the majority ruling in SFFA led some to assume that all race-conscious programs will be deemed unconstitutional, the outcome is unknown. Courts could view the stakes or dynamics of nonadmissions programs (e.g., scholarships, outreach) as differing enough from the hypercompetitive context of selective college admissions to allow continued consideration of race. Institutions and organizations could also argue that race-conscious programs are needed to address specific, documented historic discrimination. This argument is different from defending race-conscious initiatives due to broad societal discrimination, as noted by the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service.
Likely, many institutions and organizations will move away from using race/ethnicity in the selection process for scholarships and other nonadmissions programs, out of fear of litigation and threats of federal funding being withdrawn. However, they may retool selection processes to consider factors related to their missions and goals, such as prioritizing those who show a commitment to supporting historically underserved populations. Further, if the ruling in SFFA is going to be used to attack nonadmissions programs, we can’t forget that it also affirms the right of programs to consider individuals’ experiences related to race. As Chief Justice John Roberts wrote, “Nothing in this opinion should be construed as prohibiting universities from considering an applicant’s discussion of how race affected his or her life, be it through discrimination, inspiration, or otherwise.”
The Ph.D. Project, the focus of Title VI investigations by the Department of Education, is an example of a program that was, in prior iterations, vulnerable but not necessarily illegal. The department announced last month that it had launched investigations of 45 universities over their partnerships with the Ph.D. Project, alleging that the nonprofit, which offers mentorship, networking and support for prospective Ph.D. candidates in business, “limits eligibility based on the race of participants.”
The Ph.D. Project has already said that it changed its eligibility criteria earlier this year to be open to anyone who “is interested in helping to expand and broaden the pool of [business] talent”—so what will become of the investigations? Quite possibly, the Education Department will accuse institutions of breaking the law for partnering with an outreach program that in prior iterations considered race in its selection process—which is how the department likes to interpret SFFA, but that is still unsettled legal territory. Courts likely won’t hear a case on the Ph.D. Project because the program has already changed its selection criteria, so we still won’t know whether it’s legal or not to consider race in outreach programs. Until that question goes to court, we’ll probably have institutional decision-making driven more by the chilling effects of the Title VI investigations as opposed to actual law.
While programs that consider race in selection criteria are vulnerable, there are plenty of diversity-related programs and initiatives that are not, or should not be as long as they are open to all students. Programs like speaker series, workshops, lunch and learns, training programs, cultural events, resource websites, racial/ethnic or culturally focused student organizations, administrative infrastructure, and task forces related to advancing a more supportive and inclusive environment—all of these can continue to play a critical part in advancing an institution’s mission and goals.
In spite of this, the Trump administration recently proclaimed that DEI programs fuel “division and hatred” and ordered Harvard to “shutter such programs.” However, in previous communications, even the Trump administration has recognized that common DEI initiatives “do not inherently violate federal civil rights laws,” as noted by a group of leading law faculty. The directive to Harvard is serious overreach on multiple levels. We can only hope that Harvard will not capitulate to the administration’s demands and will defend its rights as an institution.
Over all, institutions must resist panic-driven overcorrections. When vulnerable programs are threatened, institutions with the resources to do so should defend them in court. In other circumstances, retooling programs, rather than eliminating them, may be necessary. Institutions should not abandon diversity, equity and inclusion efforts out of fear; instead, they should seek to support diversity both lawfully and well.
The Trump administration’s strategy is clear: sow doubt and encourage institutions to retreat. Instead of gutting diversity-related efforts wholesale, institutions need to take a more thoughtful approach. Our students depend on it, and so does the future of education.
Julie J. Park is a professor of education at the University of Maryland, College Park, and served as a consulting expert on the side of Harvard College in SFFA v. Harvard. She is the author of the upcoming book Race, Class, and Affirmative Action: A New Era in College Admissions, as well as two other books on race-conscious admissions.
Last month the government cut $400 million in federal funding for Columbia University and sent a list of demands the university would have to meet to get it back. Among them: “deliver a plan for comprehensive admission reform.”
The administration sent a similar letter earlier this month to Harvard University after freezing $9 billion in funding, demanding that the university “adopt and implement merit-based admissions policies” and “cease all preferences based on race, color, ethnicity or national origin in admissions.”
And in March the Department of Justice launched investigations into admissions practices at Stanford University and three University of California campuses, accusing them of defying the Supreme Court’s decision banning affirmative action in June 2023’s Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard.
Exactly what the Trump administration believes is going on behind closed doors in highly selective college admissions offices remains unclear. The University of California system has been prohibited from considering race in admissions since the state outlawed the practice in 1996, and both Harvard and Columbia have publicly documented changes to their admissions policies post-SFFA, including barring admissions officers from accessing the applicant pool’s demographic data.
Regardless, given the DOJ investigations and demands of Columbia and Harvard—not to mention potential demands at newly targeted institutions like Princeton, Northwestern and Brown—the federal government appears set to launch a crusade against admissions offices.
A spokesperson for the Education Department did not respond to multiple questions from Inside Higher Ed, including a request to clarify what “comprehensive admission reform” means and what evidence the administration has that admissions decisions at Columbia and Harvard are not merit-based, or that they continue to consider race even after the SFFA ruling.
Columbia acquiesced to many of the Trump administration’s demands, but it’s not clear if admissions reform is one of those concessions. When asked, a Columbia spokesperson said that “at this moment” the university had nothing to add beyond the university’s March 21 letter to the administration.
In that letter, Columbia officials wrote that they would “review our admissions procedures to ensure they reflect best practices,” adding that they’d “established an advisory group to analyze recent trends in enrollment and report to the President” on “concerns over discrimination against a particular group.”
Interestingly, Columbia officials also wrote that they would investigate “a recent downturn in both Jewish and African American enrollment.”
A Harvard spokesperson told Inside Higher Ed that the university’s “admissions practices comply with all applicable laws,” but they declined to answer additional questions about potential changes to admission policies or whether they’d received clarification from the Trump administration.
Angel Pérez, president of the National Association for College Admission Counseling, said the vague demands on college admissions offices are intentional, and that the administration is “setting institutions up for failure.”
“Institutions are certainly going to defend their process, but it’s going to be chaotic and it’s going to be noisy … it’s almost like we are seeing SFFA play itself out all over again,” he said. “Is there the potential that it could change some things about the [admissions] process? Absolutely. We just don’t know what that would look like.”
Orwell in the Reading Room
If the Trump administration’s specific grievances with selective admissions are murky, then its plan to enforce “reform” is downright opaque. However, officials have offered some hints.
In a December op-ed in The Washington Examiner, which outlined a plan that so far reflects the Trump administration’s higher education agenda with uncanny accuracy, American Enterprise Institute fellow Max Eden suggested “a never-ending compliance review” targeting Harvard and others to enforce the SFFA ruling. In his view, admissions officers should not discuss applicants or make decisions without a federal agent present to ensure they don’t even obliquely discuss race.
“[They] should assign Office of [sic] Civil Rights employees to the Harvard admissions office and direct the university to hold no admissions meeting without their physical presence,” Eden wrote. “The Office of Civil Rights should be copied on every email correspondence, and Harvard should be forced to provide a written rationale for every admissions decision to ensure nondiscrimination.”
Eden now works for the Trump administration, though it’s not clear in what capacity. Inside Higher Ed located a White House email address for him, but he did not respond to several interview requests in time for publication.
Edward Blum, the president of Students for Fair Admissions and the architect of the affirmative action ban, told Inside Higher Ed he thinks rigorous federal oversight of admissions offices is sorely needed.
“Requiring competitive colleges and universities to disclose in granular detail their admissions practices to various federal agencies is an important and wise decision,” he wrote in an email.
Pérez said that level of intrusion on a college admissions office’s process would effectively destroy the profession.
“If that were to happen, I can unequivocally tell you that we are not going to have people who want to do this work,” he said. “We know how critically important it is. But how many more headwinds can they face before they begin to ask themselves, is this really worth it?”
Crusade in Search of a Problem
Test-optional admissions policies are likely to become a magnet for federal scrutiny. In a February Dear Colleague letter instructing colleges to eliminate all race-conscious programming, the Education Department wrote that test-optional policies could be “proxies for race” to help colleges “give preference” to certain racial groups.
Personal essays may also fall under the Trump administration’s microscope. Hard-line affirmative action critics have suggested that colleges may be effectively circumventing the Supreme Court’s ban by imputing an applicant’s race from their essays. Chief Justice John Roberts’s majority opinion said that practice should be tolerated as long as an applicant’s identity is considered in the context of their personal journey. But his vaguely self-contradictory language—he added a caveat that said essays should not be used as a “proxy” for racial consideration—has engendered fierce debate over the role of the essay in applicant reviews.
Last month the University of Austin, an unaccredited new college in Texas with ideologically conservative roots, announced it would consider only standardized test scores when admitting applicants, disregarding essays, GPA and recommendation letters.
“Admissions at elite colleges now come down to who you know, your identity group or how well you play the game,” a university official wrote in announcing the policy. “This system rewards manipulation, not merit.”
Blum suspects many selective colleges of disregarding the affirmative action ban and said he was especially skeptical of those that reported higher or stable enrollments of racial minorities this fall, including Yale, Duke and Princeton. In an interview with Inside Higher Ed in February, he said he expects those institutions to invoke scrutiny from the courts and the Trump administration.
But both Columbia and Harvard reported declines in underrepresented minority enrollment last fall, especially Black students. At Harvard, Black enrollment fell by 4 percentage points, from 18 percent for the Class of 2027 to 14 percent of the Class of 2028; at Columbia Black enrollment fell by 12 points, from 20 percent to 8 percent. (This paragraph has been updated to correct Harvard’s Black enrollment figures.)
Pérez said that colleges that reported higher underrepresented minority enrollment have a simple explanation: demographic trends.
“The truth is that the majority of students applying to institutions right now are incredibly diverse and will only get more diverse,” he said. “You’re putting colleges in an impossible position if you’re penalizing them for having a more diverse applicant pool.”
Eric Staab, vice president of admissions and financial aid at Lewis & Clark College in Portland, Ore., said his institution isn’t concerned about drawing the Trump administration’s ire, despite going test-blind this year and maintaining a stable level of racial diversity.
For one, he said, he’s not sure the Office for Civil Rights will be staffed well enough to take on more than a handful of target institutions after the Education Department’s mass layoffs last month. Even if it is, Staab said he’s confident that post-SFFA, investigators wouldn’t find anything illegal or even objectionable at Lewis & Clark.
“Admissions has always been a merit-based process … with the [SFFA decision], pretty much all of us needed to do some tweaking or major overhaul of our admissions and financial aid policies, and we did that,” he said. “I’m not worried about them sending people into reading sessions, because we have nothing to cover up.”
But Pérez said there could be a broader chilling effect across admissions offices if the Trump administration pursues a more aggressive approach to its “admissions reform” agenda.
“Institutions are asking questions of the DOJ and other departments to try to get clarity, but therein lies the challenge: They have not been given clarity, so they don’t know how to prepare,” he said. “That lack of clarity is causing chaos.”
The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s provost is stepping down next month to return to the faculty there, a development that news articles last week suggested is tied to his disagreement with hiring practices at the School of Civic Life and Leadership, or SCiLL.
In a statement Friday to Inside Higher Ed, Chris Clemens, the outgoing provost, said, “I made the decision to step down as provost. During my time as provost, I’ve been able to address challenges I care deeply about and make meaningful progress. However, the issues that have arisen in recent days are not ones I can solve, and I don’t feel the same passion for them.”
His statement didn’t explain what these recent issues are, and Chapel Hill spokespeople didn’t provide further information beyond campus chancellor Lee Roberts’s April 3 announcement that Clemens had decided to step down.
Clemens will return May 16 to being the Jaroslav Folda Distinguished Professor of Physics and Astronomy, Roberts said in that announcement. Clemens has been provost since early 2022, starting under former chancellor Kevin M. Guskiewicz, who’s now president of Michigan State University. Roberts credited Clemens with, among other things, helping establish the School of Data Science and Society, the Program for Public Discourse, and SCiLL.
SCiLL was established after Chapel Hill’s Board of Trustees passed a resolution in January 2023 asking the campus administration to “accelerate its development” of this new school. The then–board chair called SCiLL an effort to “remedy” a shortage of “right-of-center views” on campus. Controversy quickly ensued. Faculty said they didn’t know a whole school was in development.
The Republican-controlled State Legislature then passed a law requiring Chapel Hill to establish the school and hire 10 to 20 faculty from outside the university, plus make them eligible for tenure. It became one of many civics or civil discourse centers—critics have called them conservative centers—that Republican lawmakers and higher education leaders have established at public universities in recent years.
In January 2025, Clemens canceled the latest SCiLL tenure-track faculty searches before reversing course days later. Articles in The Assemblyand the conservative Real Clear Investigations have now implied that Clemens’s departure was connected to his involvement in the disagreements over hiring within SCiLL.
Clemens, a self-described conservative, had been an advocate for SCiLL. The Real Clear Investigations article was titled, before the headline was changed, “In North Carolina, Academic Conservatives Have Met the Enemy and It Is … Them.”
In his Friday statement, Clemens said, “I look forward to returning to the faculty to resume work on optical design technology, with a particular focus on applications for the SOAR telescope and astronomy. This will allow me to spend more time in the classroom—an aspect of academic life I have greatly missed.”
Joseph Morrison-Howe is an undergraduate Economics student at the University of Nottingham. He completed an internship with HEPI during the summer of 2024. In this weekend long read, he discusses the history of marketisation in higher education and considers whether applicants have enough information to make informed judgements about where and what they study.
Executive summary
Study at university can be hugely beneficial for students intellectually, socially and financially. However, degrees that lead to low earnings can make individuals who study in higher education financially worse off and can impose an external cost on the taxpayer. This HEPI Policy Note uses the economic framework of market failure to argue it is likely that too many students are studying degrees that result in low earnings. Applicants should be free to choose a course according to their preferences but, they need to be encouraged to use salary outcome data to help them make an informed decision about what degree to study.
Key findings:
Existing data suggest that one in five graduates would have been financially better off not entering higher education at all. Some 40% of undergraduate students might have chosen a different route, although only 6% would not have entered higher education.
This report argues that reforms announced in 2022 to the repayment terms of student loans, from the old Plan 2 to the new Plan 5 system, will likely make university financially worthwhile for fewer students.
The graduate premium, the difference between the earnings of graduates and non-graduates, is also likely to decrease as the National Living Wage increases the wages of non-graduates.
This report proposes imperfect information as a possible cause of market failure. Prospective students should make best use of information about graduate earnings when choosing what, where or whether to study at university. The official website for information about higher education, Discover Uni, had less than 7,000 website visits in July of 2024. In the same month, nearly half a million visited the website of the Complete University Guide, an online university league table.
Policy recommendations:
Discover Uni data about graduate earnings should be displayed on UCAS so that more students use this information when making decisions about university studies.
Satisfied average graduate earnings for each course should be displayed alongside the annual salary for National Living Wage work and the average graduate and non-graduate salaries. This should help students judge if studying individual courses would be financially worthwhile.
Careers advisors should support applicants to be fully informed about the benefits of higher education – including that not everyone is financially better off for attending university.
Market analysis and higher education
Prior to the 1830s, one would be hard-pressed to convincingly describe higher education in England as a competitive market – a place where many buyers choose to buy goods or services from many sellers, who compete to win the choice of these buyers. The Universities of Oxford and Cambridge maintained a duopoly (a market dominated by two sellers) for nearly 500 years.[i] Since the early nineteenth century, changes in government policy, alongside growth in the number of universities and students, have meant higher education in England has taken on more of the characteristics of a market.
The barriers to becoming a university in England have decreased over time and choice for students has broadened. Prior to the Coalition Government of 2010, the following changes happened to the higher education sector which incidentally laid the foundation for marketisation:
Growth in the number of universities, which provided more choice for students;
growth in student numbers; and
the formation of UCAS (originally UCCA, the Universities Central Council on Admissions), providing a ‘single nationwide application process’, creating a sector that resembled a marketplace.[ii]
It was the introduction and gradual increase of tuition fees paid by the student as opposed to funding via grants from the Government that really introduced market incentives to higher education in England.
By the 1990s, with growing demand from students, the government’s ability and willingness to fund the higher education sector came into question; between 1976 and 1996, government funding per student fell by 40%, according to the Dearing Report.[iii] As a result, the greater burden for funding higher education fell on students. Tony Blair’s government introduced ‘top-up’ fees of £1,000 paid upfront by students in 1998 to supplement government funding. In 2004, the fees rose to £3,000, covered by an income-contingent loan.
The Coalition Government’s rise in tuition fees to £9,000 caused the most significant change in the structure of the higher education sector in England. This is because, as David Willetts (then University Minister) wrote, the new higher fees largely
replaced funding via a Government agency providing grants to universities with funding via the fees (funded by loans) which students brought with them.[iv]
Consequently, to attract funding for teaching, universities had to compete to attract students, as the funding came directly from students. The Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) wanted ‘to ensure that the new student finance regime supports student choice, and that in turn student choice drives competition’.[v] The characteristics of choice and competition that BIS wanted to introduce are the key characteristics of a market.
The new funding model increased competition between universities for students, first because they received funding for each student they taught and secondly, because these policy changes allowed for the removal of student number caps, which had thus far artificially limited the number of places institutions could provide. More places were made available and students were given more meaningful choice about where to study.
The increasing number of universities and the introduction of UCCA were not policies intended to create a market, but there is evidence from the coalition government of purposeful marketisation. The 2011 white paper ‘Students at the Heart of the System’ from BIS showed their clear intention to introduce what they referred to as ‘a more market-based approach’ to higher education with the new funding system.[vi] The Coalition Government’s support for the new funding system was not just as a solution to the instability and underfunding of the grant-based system but because of the market incentives a fee-based funding model would introduce.
Not all aspects of the current higher education sector in England operate like a typical market. Entry requirements mean that students’ ability to choose between universities is contingent on the grades they achieve (but the growth in the number of universities means that for a given set of grades, a student can choose between many universities). Also, students only bear the cost of their studies if they can afford to do so, as student loan repayments are only made above a particular level of earnings. In typical markets, consumers bear the cost upfront. Though important for making university studies accessible, we will see, the fact that payment is not made upfront makes the sector vulnerable to market failure.
Despite these qualities, it is clear the sector has been marketised:
students now have more choice, and
universities now engage in more competition.
There are lots of reasonable critiques of marketisation. Nevertheless, since marketisation has taken place, it can be useful to apply economic analysis to higher education. This report considers the higher education sector as a market and consequently uses economic analysis to assess if the higher education sector works efficiently for both students and wider society. The purpose of this economic analysis is to identify how to improve the higher education sector so it works best for students and wider society.
Markets and market failure in higher education
Marketisation policies introduce characteristics of a market in the hopes that the outcomes of a market will materialise. The prized outcome of markets is efficiency. An efficient market is one where the resources are allocated to give the best outcomes for society; choice allows the allocation of students to the university that best suits them, and competition incentivises the allocation of university funds where they will most improve the institution. If a market is efficient, the allocation of resources cannot be changed to make someone better off without making someone else worse off.
The outcome of markets is not always efficient; markets are prone to fail.
Market failure occurs when resources are not allocated efficiently, to give the best outcomes for the consumer and wider society.
A market failure usually results in:
too much of a good being provided;
too little of a good being provided; or sometimes,
none of a certain good being provided at all.
One example of market failure might be the market for antibiotics. If antibiotics are cheap to buy, people might purchase them even if they are not sure they need them. Over time, the overuse of antibiotics can lead to the development of antibiotic resistance, where antibiotics no longer work for the people who really need them. This is a case where market failure has led to a good being provided in excess and a more efficient outcome would see less of it provided.
This report focuses on the higher education market failing and allocating too many students to degrees that result in low earnings. In this section, I discuss how students studying degrees that lead to low earnings can result in market failure, under certain conditions. In the next section, I will analyse a possible cause of this market failure.
Market failure: degrees that lead to low earnings
For the majority of graduates, studying at university gives them — and the wider economy — good financial returns. However, the market fails and allocates too many students to courses that will lead to low graduate earnings (‘low-earning degrees’). This makes individual graduates financially worse off, compared to if they had not gone to university, and imposes an external cost on the taxpayer.11 In this case the choice of degree (or to study at all) has led to suboptimal outcomes for the individual (the student) and wider society and is therefore a case of market failure.
There is evidence to suggest many students believe they would have been individually better off making a different choice of degree, institution or even entire pathway (such as doing an apprenticeship instead). In the 2024 HEPI / Advance HE Student Academic Experience Survey, four in ten students said they would have been better with a different choice (though only 6% would not have entered higher education).[vii] This suggests these students think there was a more efficient way of allocating (their own) resources even before they know what their lifetime earnings will be.
Not all degrees that result in low earnings are necessarily cases of market failure. There is only a market failure present if there could have been a better allocation of resources, that is, students could have made a different choice that bettered themselves or wider society.
It is likely many students do not just think about earnings when they consider the value of their degree. If the individual valued their Philosophy degree for other reasons – they enjoyed the content, valued the overall university experience, and so on – it may still have been worth it for them even if it did not increase their earnings. In this case, a degree like Philosophy may have been the best option for society if these benefits to the individual student outweigh the lower earnings (and another other costs to both the student and wider society). If so, the allocation would still be efficient and this would not be a case of market failure.
Another situation where a low-earning degree may not be a case of market failure is when the degree has such large social (as opposed to individual) benefits that the choice of any other alternative would lead to a worse outcome for society. For example, if a student studies to be a social worker and this leads to low earnings, the benefits to society that stem from the social work degree will be large enough that any other choice on the student’s behalf would have made society worse off.
The examples of Philosophy and Social Work degrees are not cases of market failure because of the benefits they offer to either the individual or the rest of society. These benefits are not easily quantifiable, so it is difficult to determine which low-earning degrees are examples of market failure and which are not. Below, I will argue that if students are given clear information about the earnings from different degrees, they will be more capable of making that judgement themselves.
The effect of too many students studying low-earning degrees (before reforms to loan repayment terms)
For individual students, there is a financial consequence of choosing to study a degree that will likely result in low earnings. A 2020 report by the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) looked into the impact of undergraduate study on lifetime earnings. The report estimated that ‘one in five undergraduates would have been better off financially had they not gone to university.’[viii]
The IFS compared the lifetime earnings of a cohort of graduates to a counterfactual group that did not attend university, accounting for the difference in income tax, National Insurance and student loan repayments the graduates will have paid over their working life compared to the non-graduates. They then calculated the net lifetime returns for graduates, defined as ‘the lifetime gain or loss in earnings as a result of attending higher education for the individual, after taking into account the effect of the tax and student loans system.’[ix] The IFS found that a fifth of graduates earn less over their lifetimes than if they had not entered higher education.
Not all of the 20% of graduates that would have been better off had they not entered higher education will be cases of market failure. Some may be a Philosophy student that places a high personal value on the knowledge they gained, some may be social workers that provide great value for society, others may have studied a high earning degree and not utilised it. Furthermore, changing the discount rate the IFS use changes the proportion of students that finically benefited from higher education, as David Willetts points out. [x] Though, the IFS results are clear that not everyone entering higher education benefits from it financially.
When students choose to study a low-earning degree, there is also an external cost to the taxpayer. This external cost (a cost to a third party not involved in the transaction) arises because the taxpayer must cover the proportion of a student loan which a graduate has not paid back by the time their loan is written off. Prior to the implementation of reforms in the repayment terms of student loans announced in 2022, only 27% of graduates were estimated to repay their student loan in full.[xi]
The resource allocating and budgeting (RAB) charge is used to estimate the ‘cost to Government of borrowing to support the student finance system’. London Economics, an economics consultancy, estimated that the RAB charge for the 2022/23 cohort of students (who began their studies before the implementation of the 2022 reforms) was 10.2%. That is, the government was expected to cover 10.2% of the total value of the student loans taken out that year.[xii]
These costs, imposed on the student and wider society, might be avoided if students chose different degrees. Future earnings can be altered by a student’s choice of course to study and choice of institution to study at:
Even when comparing students with similar prior attainment and family background, different degrees appear to have a significantly different impact on early career earnings. Studying medicine or economics increases earnings five years after graduation by 25 per cent more than studying English or history. Attending a Russell Group university increases earnings by about 10 per cent more than the average degree.[xiii]
If students who chose to study low-earning degrees had instead chosen to study higher-earning degrees, they would have been less likely to impose an external cost on the taxpayer. Though, as I will explain, reforms to the student loan system mean the external cost to the taxpayer is now very small. Importantly, those students would also be more likely to give themselves positive net lifetime returns to their studies. These outcomes could make society better off. The current allocation of too many students to degrees that result in low earnings is an inefficient one. In the sense defined above, the higher education market is failing.
The impact of the reforms to the repayment terms of student loans (the move from Plan 2 to Plan 5)
The reforms announced in 2022 to the ‘Plan 2’ repayment terms on student loans have shifted the financial burden of low-earning degrees from the taxpayer to the graduate.
Under the new Plan 5 system, the income threshold at which graduates begin to make loan repayments was lowered from £27,295 to £25,000, the repayment period (after which loans are written off) was lengthened from 30 years to 40 years and the interest rate on student loans was reduced from RPI+3% down to just RPI (a measure of inflation).[xiv] These reforms have an uneven effect on graduates across the income distribution.[xv] The reduction in the repayment threshold will mean that lower-earning graduates will pay back more of their debt, and some will begin to pay it back for the first time. The lengthening of the repayment period will mean that low-earning graduates will pay back their loan for longer. The lowering of the interest rate will mean that high-earning graduates (who always would have paid back their loan in full) will now make smaller interest payments.
London Economics estimates that the RAB charge under the new terms of repayment will fall to 4.1% from 10.2%. This means that the reforms have transferred the costs of low-earning degrees from the government, which will now have to write off less debt, to the graduate, who must pay back more of it. As low-earning graduates will now make larger student loan repayments, attending university will not be financially worthwhile for more of them.
A fair assumption is that, since costs are only incurred in the future, prospective students will not be very responsive to these reforms by choosing low-earning degrees in lower numbers. Even after maximum fees were raised from around £3,000 to £9,000 in 2012, there was no significant long-term decrease in the number of applicants.[xvii] If this is the case, a greater proportion of students will now have negative net lifetime returns from their studies. Therefore, for this reform to have a positive outcome on low-earning graduates, these impacts would have to be available and clearly explained to prospective students.
The graduate premium and positive financial returns
The graduate premium is the increase in salary attributed to achieving a degree. To receive positive financial returns from studying, one’s graduate premium must be larger than their loan repayments and increased income tax and National Insurance payments. There is evidence to suggest that the graduate premium has fallen as the higher education sector has grown. Due to increases in the minimum wage, I believe the graduate premium is likely to fall further. This is likely to put a strain on the amount of students experiencing positive financial returns.
As the number of graduates increased throughout the 20th and into the 21st century, it was thought that the graduate premium would decrease. This is, in part, because as the supply of graduates increased their scarcity reduced meaning the premium an employer would pay to hire a graduate over a non-graduate should have fallen. A 2021 study by the Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA) and a team at the University of Warwick found early evidence of a 7-percentage point decline in the graduate premium.[xviii]
Recent increases in the National Living Wage are likely to further reduce the graduate premium by increasing the average wage of non-graduates. To make the UK a high-wage economy, the Government has been using National Minimum Wage legislation to increase the pay of the lowest paid. In 2020, the Conservative Government asked the Low Pay Commission to ensure the National Living Wage was two-thirds of median earnings by 2024, a target which has now been met.19 Assuming non-graduates are more likely than graduates to earn the National Living Wage. As National Living Wage has increased in relation to median pay, the average wage of non-graduates will have likely increased more than that of graduates. The graduate premium is likely to have further declined. As a result, for more students, it will not have been financially worthwhile to attend university.
Conclusion
In this section, I argue that there is a market failure and too many students are choosing to study degrees that result in low earnings. The reforms to the repayment terms of student loans and a possible decline in the graduate premium are likely to increase the proportion of graduates who are financially worse off for having gone to university. The next section of this Policy Note attempts to explain why this market failure of too many students choosing to study low-earning degrees is taking place.
The causes of market failure in higher education
This section will look at imperfect information as a possible cause of the market failure. There are other possible causes, such as low teaching quality or the fact that an individual student’s decision about whether and where to study also has effects on wider society. The government’s provision of information about graduate salaries is thought to have solved the problem of imperfect information. But this Policy Note focuses on imperfect information because prospective students are not seeing the information about graduate salaries.
Imperfect information occurs when all the parties in a transaction do not have full information about the transaction. If applicants do not know about the career prospects of a low earning degree, they may choose to study it thinking it will enhance their career prospects and then struggle to find a well-paying job after graduation. This could cause an inefficient allocation of students to courses.
People familiar with the higher education sector could likely name the universities that frequently top league tables and which subjects generally lead to high earnings. They may therefore may believe that applicants have roughly enough information to choose the best course for them. This knowledge is not common for all applicants, particularly for applicants who will be the first in their family to attend university (now roughly two-thirds of current undergraduates).[xx] An A-level student who I tutor recently demonstrated that some applicants do not have perfect information about university courses. I asked him out of the universities he wanted to apply to, which he would most like to attend. He wanted to study Management. He said he would like to go to university x “because they have a brand-new building for the business school.” I then showed him that average earnings for Management graduates 5 years after completing university x’s course were over £20,000 less than those of another university he planned to apply to. After this conversation, he chose not to apply to university x. Not all applicants have sufficient knowledge about university courses and this can cause them not to choose the course that would have been best for them.
While introducing marketising reforms since 2010, successive governments have been keen to ensure that applicants do not have imperfect information. A 2016 white paper stated an ambition for ‘more competition and informed choice into higher education’.[xxi]
As a result, prospective students now arguably have access to enough information to make informed choices. The official website for information about higher education, Discover Uni (formally Unistats) provides a wealth of information to prospective students. Discover Uni has information on student satisfaction, the entry grades of past students and information about career prospects for each course at a given university. Data from the Graduate Outcomes Survey and the Longitudinal Educational Outcomes data set are used to provide prospective students with information about the employment rate of past graduates and their earnings 15 months, three years and five years after completing a course. The wealth of information available to prospective students suggests that imperfect information cannot be the reason for too many students choosing courses that will lead to them earning less over a lifetime than if they had not studied at all.
Although prospective students have access to information about employment prospects on the Discover Uni website, few choose to use it. In July 2024, only 6,600 people visited the website.22 In the same month, 481,800 people visited the website of The Complete University Guide, an online university league table, suggesting rankings like these are used more often to make decisions about what and where to study. In the same month, 1,100,000 people visited the UCAS website (the main way to apply for higher education in the UK), which gives an indication of just how many see the information about courses and institutions it provides.
The problem may not be imperfect information, but imperfect knowledge. That is, it is not the lack of availability of information that means too many students study degrees that are not financially worthwhile but instead that applicants are not seeing the information about employment prospects.
Ensuring students see information about graduate salaries will help to correct the market failure of too many students choosing to study low-earning degrees, but it may not fully address information problems. This is because, graduate outcomes data is not a perfect indicator of what a given prospective student will earn. Past data on graduate outcomes cannot tell a prospective student about future labour market changes. However, compared to using no data at all, graduate outcomes give prospective students a good indicator of what they are likely to earn.
Graduate outcomes data may not be currently used because students (and teachers) might not fully understand the implications of the new Plan 5 repayment system. Students may have less incentive to find out the financial returns of a degree if they think a negative return would be covered by the government ‘safety net’. It may therefore be more important than ever to explain that since the 2022 reforms, most students will pay back all or almost all of their loans themselves.
The next section of this report shall propose recommendations to improve the use of the data on Discover Uni.
Policy response
Some students are choosing to study degrees that will likely lead to them having low earnings. When applying to university, students are not using the information about graduate salaries for specific courses, provided on the Discover Uni website. Without the proper use of information about how financially worthwhile degrees are, a fifth of students choose degrees that result in them earning less over their lifetime than if they had not studied at undergraduate level.9
The choice of what and where to study is an individual one; it may depend on what dream job one had as a child, the fact one may have to stay close to home to care for a relative or because one wants to improve their lifetime earnings. Regardless of why one chooses to study a given course, as it is now the student who is most likely to pay for their studies, they should be free to choose what and where to study. However, students should be exposed to the reality that their choice of course may result in them earning less over a lifetime than if they had not studied at university. Students should be encouraged to use information about graduate outcomes and this information should be explained to them. Careers advisors should explain that not all degrees are financially worthwhile and help applicants navigate the available information on graduate salaries.
To prevent students from unknowingly choosing courses that will likely lead to them earning low salaries, information about graduate outcomes should be made more usable. Therefore, the main recommendation from this HEPI Policy Note is that all of the data on Discover Uni (the government website for data which students rarely use) should be integrated into the UCAS pages for individual courses. This includes the salary outcomes for each course, or the lowest level of granularity Discover Uni provides. This makes it more likely that students applying for a course via UCAS will use this information to better inform their decisions.
Discover Uni graduate earnings data should be stratified before it is integrated into UCAS information pages. This involves weighting graduate earnings by social background, reflecting the proportion each social group represents in the wider population. Stratification would ensure that high earnings statistics from a given course do not simply reflect a cohort dominated by already affluent students.
Alongside the average graduate salaries for specific courses, theaverage graduate and non-graduate salaries should be displayed. Prospective students could be shown the current salary for a full-time minimum wage worker of £23,795 to help them judge if going to university would be financially worthwhile.[xxiii]
[vi] Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, Students at the Heart of the System, June 2011, p.73 https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/ government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/31384/11- 944-higher-education-students-at-heart-of-system.pdf
